


Smart Things

by Strange_Archivist



Series: Everything, Every Things [7]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-03 08:56:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12745110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strange_Archivist/pseuds/Strange_Archivist
Summary: Nancy Wheeler is a smart girl. But her brother is a smart boy who likes knowing he's smart. And she hopes, she dearly hopes, that Mike hasn't fixated on El because she makes him feel smarter. She also hopes, perhaps even moreso, that El hasn't latched onto him because he's the first boy her age to have shown her kindness.Nancy reflects on love, the importance of female friends, and staying true to oneself.





	Smart Things

There's a feeling she can't get rid of when she spies her brother with the girl, something she first chalked up to residual nerves about the Upside Down, then nerves about the strangeness of said girl in question. But it isn't that she's bothered so much by El's naivete or clunky mannerisms as it is that she's bothered by how wholly she and Mike are both each other's worlds.

It's... _unnerving_ to observe in two people so young. And...

Nancy is smart. She knows she's smart. But her smarts weren't the first positive thing she saw as part of her identity. She was a talented dancer and a popular girl before she realized she had a good brain and that she liked using it.

But Mike, Mike was a scrawny kid with virtually no athletic ability and almost over sharp features that had earned him the not at all friendly nickname of frog-face. Mike was shy as a little kid, he had a hard time making friends, and he didn't take to teasing lightly. Which of course just made other kids make fun of him more to get a rise out of him.

So when the teachers had called him smart, when the sometime ghost of their house Ted Wheeler took notice and also called Mike smart, Nancy saw him latch onto that with startling ferocity.

As he got older, his smarts of course often became a weapon he used against her, the little turd could be the worst sort of know-it-all. And it wasn't just that he was book smart either, he was annoyingly observant sometimes and could be a terrible tattle-tale.

Nancy Wheeler is a smart girl. But Mike Wheeler is a smart boy who likes knowing he's smart. That's what worries her.

Eleven - Jane, whatever she's calling herself these days, is also smart. Nancy can tell. She picks up on things so fast, often only needing one explanation. But Mike is always happy to do explaining. And El is still always asking questions. And she hopes, she dearly hopes, that Mike hasn't fixated on her because she makes him feel smarter. She also hopes, perhaps even moreso, that El hasn't latched onto him because he's the first boy her age to have shown her kindness.

Not that her brother doesn't have plenty of redeeming qualities aside from his astounding (at times annoying) smartness. His slowness at making friends in younger years seems to have translated into fierce protectiveness and loyalty to the friends he does have now. He's kind and sensitive (when he isn't being a turd or stealing her money) and for a nerdy, wiry, awkwardling, she can acknowledge that he's objectively kind of cute. Might even be really cute in a few years.

She hopes though, that El won't stifle her own growth just to keep those puppy eyes of his looking at her  _that_ way. She's seen lots of girls her age do stupid shit for boys (yes, herself included). She vividly remembers, with a pang, how much scorn Barb had for their former friend Tina who'd started purposely bombing math tests so she could get "tutoring" sessions from a senior (with an admittedly breathtaking grin) who had grades almost as bad as Steve's.

That had been something she'd liked about Steve. He knew she was smart, knew she was the teacher's pet, but he still liked her. Loved her even. But she'd tried to mold herself to him in other ways. As it was, she still almost didn't recognize herself anymore after a year with him, and it had taken a literal stranger in a bathrobe to tell her she wasn't happy with him.

Bauman had been wrong about who had the trust issues though. Jonathan trusted Nancy. Nancy trusted Jonathan, but she didn't trust herself anymore to like someone, or even love someone, without almost disappearing again.

Watching El make popcorn with Max in the kitchen, she's grateful that the girl has at least one good girl-friend. She just wants El to have the chance to figure out who she is before she gives herself to someone else.

"Why won't Mike's mom let us stay for the sleepover?" El asks the redhead.

Max giggles and looks uncomfortable, but then sees El's serious expression. "Oh man, you really don't know. Um, okay, you know what sex is, right?"

"Gender," El answers promptly.

"Um, okay, that's, I mean, yes, that's one meaning of the word. Ugh, I dunno, I keep forgetting that there's so much you've missed. I dunno, just, boys and girls are different and because of that, a lot of parents aren't usually keen on dual-gender sleepovers. Especially when you're in high school and we will be next week so..."

El accepts that answer, but Nancy thinks the girl still looks a little hurt. Left out.

"You know, we could have a sleepover, just us girls," she pipes up before really realizing what she's saying.

"Us girls?"

"Yeah," Nancy says, a plan forming in her mind. "Don't let it get you down, the guys don't ever do anything that exciting during their sleepovers, but we can do lots of fun stuff at ours."

Both El and Max perk up at that.

 

* * *

 

Joyce isn't sure why she'd agreed to have the girls over while Will stayed at the Wheeler's with the other boys. Maybe it's because Nancy mentioned El had never been to one. Maybe it's because Nancy sounded lonely on the phone. Maybe it's because _she's_ lonely with Will at his sleepover and Jonathan working late and she'd just spent the previous hour crying after hearing the song she and Bob had danced to play on the radio.

So she goes out and rents movies, buys an absurd amount of junk food and some frozen pizzas, and rounds up all the spare sleeping bags and blankets she can find into the living room.

The pizza is just coming out of the oven when there's a knock on the door and a call of, "Mrs. Byers?" from Nancy.

She opens the door, Nancy and Max have their own sleeping bags, plus knapsacks slung on their backs. El has her own overnight bag, and is carrying a large, pink makeup case that looks to be Nancy's. She tries to brighten. "Uh, hey dude-ettes! Hey gal pals! Who's this Mrs. Byers? Tonight it's just Joyce - nope that's weird. Just, uh, just come on in."

El is giving her customary confused stare, Nancy looks a bit uncomfortable, but Max is grinning, and that gives her all the encouragement she needs. She's always been happy to be the biggest weirdo in the room if it gets her sons to open up or at least smile, and apparently the same tack will work with at least one of these girls. The girls didn't need her to be their gal pal, they needed a mother who knew about everything they'd been through.

"Right," she says, getting comfortable back in mom mode. "Pizza's ready and we have chips and soda and cookies and gummy bears. I wasn't sure what you'd want to watch so I rented a couple of different things. Some musicals, some comedies, and some," she pauses for dramatic effect, "romance." She wiggles her eyebrows at the two younger girls who both giggle. "Whaddya thinkin'?"

Nancy looks over the tapes. "Oooh, we should watch this one! You'd both love it." She picks up 'Singin' In The Rain'.

Joyce smiles, it's one of her favorites.

They settle in with their pizza and the movie. El is immediately enthralled with the film. Max at first seems dubious, but quickly too gets swept up by the first musical number.

When Nancy asks her to pause it so she can use the restroom, Joyce spots El yawning.

"Oh no, you can't be tired! You're supposed to stay up all night at a sleepover!"

"All night?"

"Figure of speech," Max says.

"Yeah, but at least till midnight. Maybe some more soda will help keep you awake. If Hopper asks, I did not tell you that." She winks at the girl as she pours her more soda. El smiles.

"Tell her what?" Nancy asks, resuming her spot by the couch.

"That sleepovers, well, at least in my day at sleepovers we used to stuff our faces, and do each other's hair, and stay up late playing truth or dare."

Nancy grins. "Yeah we can do that if you want," she says to Max and El. "I brought my makeup so we can give each other makeovers too if you want. Oh, and, well, maybe we shouldn't."

"Shouldn't what?" El asks.

"Well, my friends and I used to prank call people too. We'd call random numbers from the phone book and ask if their refrigerator was running or dare each other to call the houses of boys we liked."

"Okay, you had me on board for the first part of that," Max says.

"Can we finish the movie first?" El asks.

They turn the movie back on and settle in again.

 

* * *

 

 

"You know," Joyce starts later as the movie ends, breaking them all out of the spell the movie had cast, "I had such a crush on Gene Kelly when I was younger."

Nancy grins, grateful that Mrs. Byers - _Joyce_ is doing her part to give the girls a traditional sleepover. "Really?" she says.

"Oh yeah," Joyce says grabbing for another oreo. "I thought he was so dreamy," Nancy giggles. "Oh like you never had a crush on a celebrity!"

"I didn't say that!"

"What's a celebrity?" El asks.

"Someone famous," Max says. "Actors like the ones in the movie we just watched. Singers and stuff too."

El seems to consider this. "Why?" she asks.

"Why what?" Max asks.

"Why - why crush on a celebrity?"

"Oh, um, I dunno. A lot of people do though. My mom always had a celebrity crush on Elvis." Max says and then mimes vomiting into her cup.

Joyce laughs. "It's not very logical I guess. Crushes never are. It's mostly, well, mostly based on looks. I thought Gene Kelly was handsome."

"Oh, he was!" Nancy agrees. "Very dapper." She laughs, though El seems unsure why it's so funny. "My first celebrity crush was John Travolta," she admits, more than a little embarrassed, but hoping it'll get the other girls to open up a bit more. She idly wonders if perhaps Steve reminded her a bit of Danny Zucko. Or if Jonathan does. _Nope, weird, stay on track, Nancy._

"Oh blergh, are we just gonna talk about stupid boys all night?" Max groans. "Lame."

"Well what do you want to do?" Joyce asks, grinning at the girl's bravado.

"That prank call thing sounded pretty good," Max says, grinning. But Nancy sees Joyce's expression falter a bit.

"What's a prank call?" El asks.

"I'll show you," Max says, picking up the phone. She deftly dials 867-5309. "Hello, Jenny?"

"Oh my god!" Nancy bursts out laughing, immediately getting the joke. A garbled shout from the other end, "Jimmy" crackle, "here anymore!" crackle, "STOP CALLING!" The sound of the phone on the other end being slammed.

Nancy has tears in her eyes and briefly thinks that if El has friends like this, especially girl friends, she'll be alright. El herself again seems unsure of what's so funny, but she's laughing too.

"I shouldn't laugh," Joyce says, clutching her chest. "I - when Will was, oh nevermind. That was," laughter, "that was funny, but, let's not prank call people anymore. It's not nice. How about we play some mad-libs?"

It had taken a while to explain the process of mad-libs to El, but she seemed to really like the game once she got the hang of it. A half hour later she's reading, "' _Poop_!' he said _delightedly_ , as he jumped into his convertible _dog_ next to his _smelly_ friend and _swam_ off." They all laugh at the absurdity of the combination of words.

Max's mad-libs include lots of use of the word fart and several very descriptive words they often have to look up to make sure they're real words.

"Thank you for having a girl sleepover for us," El says to Nancy when they start putting the snacks away.

"Of course. We don't need the boys to have fun."

"I still don't understand why we couldn't sleepover with them."

 Nancy looks to Joyce.

"Has Hopper, um, has Hopper given you the, um, the talk?" Joyce asks.

"The talk?" El looks around to Max who shakes her head.

Joyce groans. "Of course he hasn't. I'd normally say, being that he's your sort of dad and all, he should be the one to tell you, but you can't be going into high school without knowing." Joyce goes to the bookshelf and retrieves a book. "This, uh, well, I got this because I wasn't sure how to explain it all to two boys and I knew Lonnie wouldn't. This at least has the basics."

Nancy goes back to cleaning up, trying hard not to think about how one of those boys is her current boyfriend. Max accompanies her, her face nearly as red as her hair, loudly clanking plates as she cleans them and Nancy dries.

To her credit, Nancy thinks Joyce does a pretty good job, especially considering that El isn't her own child and that it can be hard to know where El's knowledge gaps are. Joyce is adamant that neither her body or sex are anything to be ashamed of, and Nancy considers joining in before realizing she's not sure she really wants to be giving her little brother's girlfriend sex advice. Especially in front of her boyfriend's mom.

El looks understandably overwhelmed by the end of the discussion, particularly when Joyce stuffs some of her own pads into the pocket of the girl's overnight bag. "Better to be prepared, I got my first period on a field trip. Ruined my favorite skirt," she says. "Now, you can always come to me with any questions. Okay?"

El nods.

A car pulls into the driveway and Jonathan comes inside the house a few moments later.

"Hey," he says, hugging his mom hello and then crossing the room to Nancy. "How's the sleepover going?"

"Very well, thank you," Joyce says.

"Well don't let me keep you ladies," he kisses Nancy and goes down the hall to his room.

"I think it's time for me to turn in too," Joyce says. "There's a reason most mom's don't usually do sleepovers, just can't stay up like I used to. Don't stay up too late, girls."

As if on cue, El yawns. Nancy helps El and Max roll out the sleeping bags and then they all take their turns using the bathroom to brush their teeth and change into their pajamas.

"We didn't play truth or dare or do makeovers," El says as they settle into their sleeping bags.

"We can have another sleepover some other time if you want," Nancy tells her. "Would you like that?"

She nods.

"Yeah," Max agrees. "Just uh, less of 'the talk' next time?"

Nancy laughs. "Yeah. That was probably enough awkward to hold us all off for a while."

"Seriously."

"It was better than what my mom tried to do for me," Nancy insists. "She tried to give me this metaphor about women being flower gardens and men getting the seeds to grow with a garden hose."

"Oh god that's horrible!" Max giggles and looks to El who claps a hand over her mouth, giggling too.

"It was. But yeah, we can have sleepovers whenever you guys want." Nancy yawns. "For now, let's get to that sleeping part."

The next morning Jonathan makes them all bacon and waffles from scratch and El eats enough to make most normal people sick, but somehow the girl seems fine.

Nancy takes both the girls back to her house after that. There's a whole week of summer still left after all, and the girls are friends, but have four more friends likely still in the Wheeler basement that they want to spend the last few long summer days with.

"El!" Mike exclaims when he sees her. His hair is mussed and he's still in a t-shirt and too-short pajama pants.

"Mike!" she rushes to him, not seeming to mind his disheveled appearance.

"Max!" Lucas shouts in a fair mimic of Mike.

"Lucas!" Max says back, pretending to be just as lovestruck. "It's been a whole twelve hours apart!" She dramatically takes his hands in hers.

Dustin and Will laugh at their parody.

"Shut up," Mike says to them, barely sparing them a glare.

"How was your sleepover?" El asks him, unfazed.

"Pretty good," he says, turning back to her. "How was yours?"

"Good. We watched musicals and ate lots of junkfood and did mad-libs and prank calls."

He smiles at her. "That sounds great. Do you want to ride bikes and hang out with us today?"

El nods eagerly and Mike and the other boys rush to get dressed.

Nancy heads upstairs after her brother, thinking a nap before her shift at the pool sounds nice, when a hand stops her door from fully closing and Mike pops his head in. She hates that he's taller than her now.

"Hey, uh, thanks for, uh, you know, the sleepover. You didn't have to do that for El."

"I know," she says. "I wanted to."

"Yeah, well, thanks."

"Hey," she says before he can leave. "You know you're not the only one who cares about her, right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just, I'm glad she can sort of have a normal kind of life now, ya know? Be like, her own person."

Nancy smiles. Thinks maybe her smart, turd, kid brother isn't such a turd afterall. Maybe he and his smart girlfriend might have things figured out afterall. "Yeah me too."

"What'd you guys talk about last night anyway?"

Her brother's a good guy. But he has been a turd to her in the past. And Nancy is smart too. And she isn't one to pass up a chance to give back as good as she's gotten.

"Oh, you know, human anatomy."

**Author's Note:**

> Holy balls, this took forever to write. And then my phone died and I lost a huge chunk of it and I cried for an unreasonable amount of time. It was REALLY hard for me to do this one while trying to stay true to everyone, but I really want El to have good experiences like this with good female role models (Kali I think is not that, unfortunately).
> 
> I admit it, Nancy was sort of me in this story, I sort of have this creeping bug in my brain sometimes where I just recall movies where the female love interest comes from another world and is super innocent and naive and it strikes me as vaguely patronizing, even kind of dehumanizing. I just reallllllllly hope it doesn't happen in this show with this ship. This ship warms my heart.
> 
> okay enough rambling. Credit where it's due, the bit about the flower garden and hose is borrowed from the movie Now and Then, which I highly recommend. It's actually kind of like a less creepy, all girl version of Stranger Things. So, you know, pretty great.
> 
> Also, I have no idea if you could call 867-5309 in Indiana in the 80s. I'm guessing no, but it was too good a joke for me to pass up when I thought about the girls doing prank calls. Y'all can thank Tommy Tutone for that one.
> 
> Last but not least, please comment and let me know what you think!


End file.
